Mobile consumption site seeks donations to keep rolling in Penticton
As hard as it may be for some people to wrap their heads around the idea of a bus travelling the streets of Penticton to provide a supervised consumption site for injection drug users, it’s even harder to think about the alternatives.
“I’d rather have (the bus) than have people overdosing in alleys and dying on our streets. We’re only allowed to operate in this community because we’ve been able to prove there’s a need in this community,” said Desiree Franz, one of the co-founders of the Penticton and Area Overdose Prevention Society.
Franz, who works in the field of mental health and addictions, helped form the society this past spring in an effort to stem the tide of fatal overdoses in Penticton.
At least 10 people died of suspected drug overdoses in Penticton through the first five months of 2021, according to the most recent data published by the B.C. Coroners Service. That compared to 19 in Kelowna and 13 in Vernon, and left Penticton on track to top the record-high annual death toll of 21 it saw in 2019.
Faced with those grim numbers, Franz and other society founders pooled their money to purchase the former transit bus and outfit it for its new passengers, typically street-entrenched people who don’t have access to overdose prevention sites in local homeless shelters and supportive housing facilities.
“We are a small community, compared to a lot of places that offer these services, but our overdose rates are on par with those larger communities,” said Franz.
The bus, which has been on the road since June, typically operates on Friday and Saturday nights, plus the four nights that follow the issuance of monthly income assistance cheques.
Franz said the number of people who have made use of the bus on any given night has ranged from one to six, while her volunteers generally make contact with 20 or 30 more people through related outreach work that includes offering food, water, hygiene products, harm reduction supplies and referrals to shelters, counselling and other services.
“Some people think we’re just making it easier for people to use drugs, but when people access these consumption services, they actually are a lot more likely to enter recovery programs,” said Franz.
“We try and connect people with as many resources as we can to keep them well and healthy.”
The bus is the only mobile supervised consumption site that has been sanctioned by Interior Health outside of Kamloops and Kelowna.
Interior Health didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday on the sanctioning process.
To help support continued operation of the bus, the Penticton and Area Overdose Prevention Society has launched a GoFundMe page through which it is trying to raise $2,000 to cover expenses like fuel and insurance for the rest of the year.
The group is also looking for more volunteers to staff the bus and outreach team.
To help, email pentictonoverdoseprevention@gmail.com